Why we built Fix or Hire.

It usually starts with a text. A water heater that's gone cold, a breaker that won't reset, a door that won't latch anymore. It goes to one of five phones on a group chat that's been running longer than any of us can quite remember. Someone answers within the hour. That's not a customer service promise. It's just what happens when five friends who grew up together end up, decades later, living across the street from each other again.

None of us do this for a living. Our day jobs today are in consulting and finance, nothing to do with plumbing, electrical, or HVAC. A few of us have changed careers more than once along the way, so even that part hasn't stayed constant. The one thing that has, for close to three decades now, is what happens the moment something breaks at home: the instinct has never been to reach for the phone and call someone. It's been to go take a look first. We've been doing this longer, and more consistently, than we've done any single job we've actually been paid for.

That instinct is older than the internet being useful for this kind of thing. Back when "figuring it out" meant actually understanding how a part worked, not just watching someone else do it on a screen. We got a lot of it wrong along the way. More than once, something one of us confidently "fixed" ended up costing real money to undo, sometimes more than just calling a professional in the first place would have. We're not glossing over that part. It's the whole reason this site exists: those expensive mistakes are exactly how we learned to tell a job worth attempting from one that isn't.

That instinct didn't stay contained to our own houses, either. Somewhere along the way, we became the call our friends and family make before they call anyone else: "should I try this myself, or is this a hire-a-professional situation?" We'd walk them through the same thinking we'd worked out the hard way for ourselves. Once in a while one of us would actually go fix it. More often, what we were really handing someone wasn't our hands at all. It was a judgment call, the same one you'll find on every page of this site.

It's rarely all five of us on any given problem. Sometimes it's whoever's free that weekend. Sometimes the job's small enough that it only needs one person and a phone call for a second opinion. A lot of the actual problem-solving happens in that same group chat, long before anyone picks up a tool. That's how this has always worked, and in a roundabout way, it's exactly how this site came to exist too.

About two years ago, someone floated building an app out of all this. We talked ourselves out of it fast: nobody's downloading an app for something that comes up once every few months. A website made far more sense. Something you could land on at 9pm with a wrench in one hand, get an honest answer, and get back to it. So that's what we built.

We're not licensed tradespeople, and we've never claimed to be. What we are is five homeowners who've spent close to thirty years getting this exact decision right and wrong in roughly equal measure. This site is our attempt to hand you the "right" half of that a little faster than we got there ourselves.

What Fix or Hire actually is

We're not a contractor, a lead-generation service, or a trade marketplace, and we never will be. We don't have a network of local pros we route your information to, and we don't get paid when you decide to hire someone. Every guide is built the same way: by researching how the repair actually works, cross-referencing manufacturer documentation and established home-repair references, and being honest about where the line sits between "safe for most homeowners" and "this needs a licensed professional." When a repair genuinely requires a professional, because of gas, main electrical panels, structural risk, or specialized tools, we say so plainly, rather than stretching a guide to cover something it shouldn't.

What we're not

• We're not a contractor directory or lead-gen service. We don't sell your information to local pros.
• We're not sponsored by tool or parts brands to recommend specific products.
• We're not trying to talk you into DIY-ing everything. Plenty of our guides recommend hiring a pro, and we mean it every time we say it.

For the specifics of how we evaluate cost, time, and safety risk for each repair, see our Methodology page. If you've spotted something inaccurate, or you don't see your repair listed yet, we'd like to hear about it. Use the Contact page or suggest a guide.